Despite the tidal wave of joy that liberals have been enjoying ever since Kamala Harris took over the Democratic ticket and then drop-kicked Donald Trump back to Mar-A-Lago at the debate…I’m still nervous. Because even though Trump has, incredibly, reached new levels of madness in the last couple of weeks, we’re still on a razor thin margin. 

I won’t put his deeply bizarre comments about Haitian immigrants eating people’s pets here, because you’ve already heard them, but…wow, the racism is strong with that one. 

That razor-thin margin worries me, and even more so because – and I do truly hate to say this – I am worried about men. I had dinner with an acquaintance the other night, and the vitriol – I mean it, vitriol, with f-bombs and blanket statements and just straight-up misinformation – was…I guess it shouldn’t be astounding anymore, but coming from a person who also lauded Obama…it was shocking. 

“She’s only on the ticket because of racism and sexism,” he said, before calling her a “total f-ing idiot” and challenging me – loudly, and forcefully – to tell him one – just one – relatable thing she’d said during the debate. I brought up the ectopic pregnancy I almost died from, in hopes that would shut him down, but no, it just sent him off on a tangent about how I was obviously a single-issue voter.

This man does not want a woman in the White House. Or, apparently, company that lasts past the appetizer course. (Did I leave before the entrees? Oh yes. I left.) 

I am afraid that there are a lot of him. And that we’ll once again be taken by surprise, because voting booths are private, private places. I worry that when standing alone in a cubby with no one but their own preconceptions, fears and anxieties for company, too many people will look at the decision between a racist sexual predator with a dictator fetish and a woman…and find the latter to be just a step too far. 

That said. The privacy of the voting booth works both ways. I’m sure you’ve seen the Instagram posts encouraging women to vote – and reminding them that their husbands do not need to not know who they voted for. It makes me so sad that that’s where we are as a country – so divided that we can’t make polite conversation with each other for an hour, so divided that we can’t even voice our feelings to our partners…but here we are. 

So I’d like to take this moment to remind you that your vote, when you cast it – because you’re voting, right? Right? – your vote is private. But if you’re still nervous about someone close to you asking…listen, I’m a mom, which obviously gives me the authority to tell you to go ahead and lie. It’s nobody’s business but your own who you vote for, and if someone wants to hassle you about it that is their poor judgment and crappy sense of boundaries. 

Vote with your heart, with your conscience, and with your morals – not because you’re afraid of what someone else might say. Because they’ll never know if you don’t want to tell them.